It is a fine house, still, the Gothic Revival mansion just off Savannah's Madison Square. It was built in 1850 for merchant Charles Green. In 1864, William Tecumseh Sherman slept here. We were in the dining room. "With some imagination," said Philip Kirk, our guide, "you can see Sherman toasting his officers here on Christmas Day 1864." Yes, Sherman also celebrated here. Six weeks earlier in Atlanta--which he burned to the ground--the Union general and the troops under his command...

Aside from being a ruthless killer-general who put a stake through the bleeding heart of the Old South, and did so right in its own backyard, William Tecumseh Sherman was quite the student of human nature. Indeed, as played by the ever-restless, raw and verbose Harry Groener in Frank Galati's rich, erudite and high-minded - if overly chilly and elliptical - new Steppenwolf Theatre stage adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's 2005 novel "The March," Sherman's soliloquies and colloquies...

Those of us who dislike finger-wagging nanny-state-nagging liberalism relish the prospect of President Barack Obama sneaking a cigarette on the second floor of the White House while rereading Harry V. Jaffa's great work on Lincoln, "Crisis of the House Divided," then taking a break to stroll over to take a look at the White House's copy of Emanuel Leutze's painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware," then going back to the family quarters to tell...

In 1864, a diminutive and unprepossessing general named William Tecumseh Sherman stormed through the South with more than 60,000 Union troops. Even though Sherman had previously supped and socialized in many of the cities he would set ablaze, he rampaged through Georgia and ransacked the Carolinas until the ordinary citizens brutally assaulted therein could barely tell their North from their South. So what, exactly, was this march? It was, inarguably, many things: the death knell for slavery, the...

By Edward J. Dziedzic, U.S. history teacher, Whitney Young High School | August 1, 2003

Joanne G. Murphy's July 28 letter to the editor took another letter writer to task for stating that the Civil War was fought to end slavery. She states that slavery was merely a "peripheral issue" and that the war was really fought for economic reasons and to drag the South back into the union. As a history teacher, I try to have my students understand that the reasons for the actions of governments are usually complex and seldom can be attributed to a solitary cause. To say, however, that slavery was a...

Those of us who dislike finger-wagging nanny-state-nagging liberalism relish the prospect of President Barack Obama sneaking a cigarette on the second floor of the White House while rereading Harry V. Jaffa's great work on Lincoln, "Crisis of the House Divided," then taking a break to stroll over to take a look at the White House's copy of Emanuel Leutze's painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware," then going back to the family quarters to tell...

By Reviewed by Patrick T. Reardon, A Tribune reporter | October 2, 1992

Sherman at War By Joseph H. Ewing Morningside, 194 pages, $24.95 Early in the Civil War, there were those who thought William Tecumseh Sherman mad. He was so excitable. So full of energy. So intense. Yet it wasn`t insanity that was at work in Sherman, but an almost preternatural sense of himself and his task. Sherman, one of the three most talented and successful generals of the war, was not a man of questions or confusions. He saw life with a clarity...

It is a fine house, still, the Gothic Revival mansion just off Savannah's Madison Square. It was built in 1850 for merchant Charles Green. In 1864, William Tecumseh Sherman slept here. We were in the dining room. "With some imagination," said Philip Kirk, our guide, "you can see Sherman toasting his officers here on Christmas Day 1864." Yes, Sherman also celebrated here. Six weeks earlier in Atlanta--which he burned to the ground--the Union general and the troops under his command...

In 1864, a diminutive and unprepossessing general named William Tecumseh Sherman stormed through the South with more than 60,000 Union troops. Even though Sherman had previously supped and socialized in many of the cities he would set ablaze, he rampaged through Georgia and ransacked the Carolinas until the ordinary citizens brutally assaulted therein could barely tell their North from their South. So what, exactly, was this march? It was, inarguably, many things: the death knell for slavery, the...

By Edward J. Dziedzic, U.S. history teacher, Whitney Young High School | August 1, 2003

Joanne G. Murphy's July 28 letter to the editor took another letter writer to task for stating that the Civil War was fought to end slavery. She states that slavery was merely a "peripheral issue" and that the war was really fought for economic reasons and to drag the South back into the union. As a history teacher, I try to have my students understand that the reasons for the actions of governments are usually complex and seldom can be attributed to a solitary cause. To say, however, that slavery was a...

Aside from being a ruthless killer-general who put a stake through the bleeding heart of the Old South, and did so right in its own backyard, William Tecumseh Sherman was quite the student of human nature. Indeed, as played by the ever-restless, raw and verbose Harry Groener in Frank Galati's rich, erudite and high-minded - if overly chilly and elliptical - new Steppenwolf Theatre stage adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's 2005 novel "The March," Sherman's soliloquies and colloquies...

By Reviewed by Harold Holzer, author of "Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President" | September 10, 1995

Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman By Michael Fellman Random House, 465 pages, $30 `He never acknowledged an error and never repeated it." So a contemporary described the ever-controversial William Tecumseh Sherman, who made Georgia howl on his brutal Civil War march from Atlanta to the sea, and later, in one of the great understatements in military history, declared that war was "hell." To millions of unrepentant Southerners, now as then, Sherman knew whereof he...

By James M. McPherson. and James M. McPherson is professor of history at Princeton University. His book "Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era" won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1989 | July 22, 1993

At a ceremony in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on July l2, the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission presented its report to Congress. In the last two years this panel visited dozens of battlefields in 11 states and heard testimony from more than 150 members of the public. It found that of 384 Civil War battlefields, 71 (18 percent) have been lost to urban and commercial development and nearly half of the remainder are in serious danger of total or partial...

By James M. McPherson. and James M. McPherson is professor of history at Princeton University. His book "Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era" won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1989 | July 22, 1993

At a ceremony in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on July l2, the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission presented its report to Congress. In the last two years this panel visited dozens of battlefields in 11 states and heard testimony from more than 150 members of the public. It found that of 384 Civil War battlefields, 71 (18 percent) have been lost to urban and commercial development and nearly half of the remainder are in serious danger of total or partial...

The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans By Charles Royster Knopf, 503 pages, $30 The Civil War in the American West By Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. Knopf, 417 pages, $27.50 It began as a picnic war. As the two armies prepared to face each other for the first time in July 1861, Washington society smugly packed lunch baskets and rushed across the Potomac to Manassas, Va.,...

By Reviewed by Patrick T. Reardon, A Tribune reporter | October 2, 1992

Sherman at War By Joseph H. Ewing Morningside, 194 pages, $24.95 Early in the Civil War, there were those who thought William Tecumseh Sherman mad. He was so excitable. So full of energy. So intense. Yet it wasn`t insanity that was at work in Sherman, but an almost preternatural sense of himself and his task. Sherman, one of the three most talented and successful generals of the war, was not a man of questions or confusions. He saw life with a clarity...

Barnard Observatory, the encyclopedia's nerve center, is a two-story antebellum brick-and-frame fortress with three towers. White wooden porches, one above the other, butt against the lower part of one of the towers and wrap around the front and one side. At a corner of the first-floor porch is an abandoned tricycle, giving the building, large as it is, the air of a private home rather than a collegiate center. Sitting slightly uphill from Sorority Row's elegant mansions with their pillared porches,...

The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans By Charles Royster Knopf, 503 pages, $30 The Civil War in the American West By Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. Knopf, 417 pages, $27.50 It began as a picnic war. As the two armies prepared to face each other for the first time in July 1861, Washington society smugly packed lunch baskets and rushed across the Potomac to Manassas, Va.,...

By Reviewed by Harold Holzer, author of "Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President" | September 10, 1995

Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman By Michael Fellman Random House, 465 pages, $30 `He never acknowledged an error and never repeated it." So a contemporary described the ever-controversial William Tecumseh Sherman, who made Georgia howl on his brutal Civil War march from Atlanta to the sea, and later, in one of the great understatements in military history, declared that war was "hell." To millions of unrepentant Southerners, now as then, Sherman knew whereof he...

Barnard Observatory, the encyclopedia's nerve center, is a two-story antebellum brick-and-frame fortress with three towers. White wooden porches, one above the other, butt against the lower part of one of the towers and wrap around the front and one side. At a corner of the first-floor porch is an abandoned tricycle, giving the building, large as it is, the air of a private home rather than a collegiate center. Sitting slightly uphill from Sorority Row's elegant mansions with their pillared porches,...